Gonna Be the One
by Sorrel
Summary: AU. Clark's not on Red K anymore, but its lingering effects cause him to be a little obsessive. A coincidental meeting causes him to fixate on Lex, who isn't sure that he minds. Spoilers for Pilot and Exodus. ClarkLex SLASH.


**Gonna Be the One.

* * *

**

Lex was twenty-three years old, and he'd already died twice.

The first time was when he was nine years old, and he'd run through the rows of corn while the fires of hell had descended upon him from above. He'd woken up to his father staring down at him in horror, and known that his life was about to change for the worse.

The second time, he'd been twenty-one, and he'd run into a teenage boy and off the bridge. His last thought was an apology to the gorgeous boy he'd smashed, and then he was swallowed by cool green river water. He'd dreamed of flying over Smallville, and woke to see the boy kneeling over his prone body, dripping wet and panting, and Lex's first thought was that at least it was better than last time.

Tonight Lex was going to come very close to losing his life a third time, but once again, Fate would intervene.

* * *

Lex hadn't been on the club circuit for… ages. Not since his brief foray into Smallville, in fact, which had ended with a literal bang and had left him with a desire to clean up his act, lest God get fed up with him and run him off any more bridges.

He had reason to celebrate tonight, though. LexCorp had been up and running for six months now, and was still firmly in the black. He knew for a fact that Lionel hated the very thought of Lex running his own company instead of working under his father, and that fact alone would have made it worth it, even without everything else.

He was planning on getting just drunk enough to enjoy himself and find someone attractive enough, and practiced enough, to not be a waste of his time. It shouldn't be too hard, not in a place like Atlantis, and Lex was enjoying himself just sitting at the bar and watching the writhing masses of people, all desperate to escape when they themselves were the problem.

"Hey, Kal!" the bartender said, and Lex glanced sharply up to his left towards the figure that was suddenly looming there. Didn't this guy know any better than to get into the personal space of Lex Luthor?

Apparently not, since the guy wasn't showing any sign of having noticed Lex's existence, much less his identity. "Hey, Johnny," Kal said back. His voice was a low rumble in his chest, barely audible over the pulse of the music. "How's it hangin'?"

"Good man, good," Johnny the bartender said, and they exchanged the complicated male handshake thing that Lex had never been able to make sense of. "You want the usual?"

"No," Kal said slowly, and Lex, without looking at him, knew that he had just appeared on the guy's radar. "No, I think I'm gonna try something different tonight."

Johnny laughed. "Good luck, man," he said. "You'll need it, with him." The bartender was gone, serving someone at the other end of the semi-circular bar, before Lex could utter the scathing protest that rose automatically to his lips.

"So," Kal said, propping himself against the bar and leaning even closer into Lex's personal space. "Lex Luthor. Long time, no see."

That was surprise enough to get Lex to look up from his beer, and he suddenly was hit with the impact of a sparkling grin and green eyes that were far too familiar. "Fuck," Lex said, since sometimes there just wasn't any better way of putting it.

"Huh, so you do remember me," Clark Kent said. "I was wondering."

"It's not every day that someone saves my life," Lex replied. "What the hell are you doing in Metropolis, at a place like this?"

Clark shrugged and settled himself more comfortably against the bar. The movement did interesting things to the shirt he was wearing- skintight, sleeveless, black, and cut just below the rib cage to display the truly impressive abs on the kid. Not that Lex noticed. Because he didn't notice things like that. Ever.

"I've been haunting this place since April," Clark said, and that was something of a shock, as it was now late November. The kid had been away from home for that long?

"You ran away?" he asked, because he couldn't not, but Clark just shrugged again.

"Yeah. Some bad shit went down in Smallville, and I needed some breathing space."

"And you're… what, still breathing?" Lex was skeptical, and with reason. Clark had struck him, on their two very brief meetings, as a wholesome sort of boy. A _straight,_ wholesome sort of boy.

"I was on some stuff that made me not care, at first," Clark said. "It wore off after a couple of months, but by then Metropolis was my home. It's better to me than Smallville ever was."

Lex let his gaze sweep up and down Clark's long frame. The shirt, which he had already noticed, was paired with worn leather pants, a silver chain around his hips, and heavy black boots that gave him another couple inches in height. His eyes were rimmed in black, his cheeks were dusted with gold, and his lips were red from some sort of lipstick or gloss. He looked gorgeous, the butterfly born from the caterpillar Lex had encountered in Smallville. A deadly butterfly, because for all his polished beauty, there was still something inherently dangerous about him.

"I can see that," he said. Clark was grinning at him, an edge to his smile that showed he'd been affected by Lex's look, and it was easy for Lex to pretend he felt nothing. Until tonight, he'd been attracted to one male in his entire life, and while Clark Kent in Smallville might inhabit the same body as Clark Kent in Metropolis, Lex couldn't rightly call them the same person. He wasn't sure if that made things better or worse for him, and wished that he didn't care.

"Besides," Clark said, his eyes still focused like laser beams on Lex's face, "I'm not the same person as I was back then. Not sure I have a place in Smallville, you know?"

"Why, I hadn't noticed any difference," Lex said dryly, trying to cover the pounding of his heart. Of course, Clark probably noticed anyway, he was so intent on watching Lex.

Clark grinned at him lazily. "I said that the stuff wore off, not that it isn't still affecting me. Fucked with my head a bit, and I tend to go a bit crazy unless I… focus." And his look made it very, very clear that his newest focus was Lex.

Lex wasn't exactly sure what to do with this information. Easy to pass off his attraction to Clark Kent, Kansas farmboy, as something born of gratitude and Clark's absolute innocence, but this was something else altogether. And Lex didn't fuck men.

He was opening his mouth to say something along those lines when Clark overrode him with careless disregard. "Good song," he said, tilting his head suggestively. "You're not gonna make me sit it out, are you?"

"I wouldn't dream of it," Lex said. "I'd never want to hold you back." Something uncomfortably like truth in those words.

"Hard to hold me back if you're with me," Clark said, and grabbed his wrist. Lex tried to pull away, only to discover that Clark's grip was literally unbreakable, and within seconds he found himself dragged onto the dance floor.

Clark wrapped around him from behind, Lex found his heart kicking into overdrive. Clark's long body was pressed against his back, his hips, his ass, and those long legs were tangled with his. Clark's arms were curled around his torso, and those huge, hot, _male_ hands rested on his hips, guiding his movements.

Lex could feel his cock hardening in his pants, just inches from the tips of Clark's fingers, and a blush burned across his cheekbones. He hadn't blushed for _years,_ and it wasn't exactly helping his comfort level that he was doing it now.

"You smell good," Clark said, right into his ear. His breath was hot against the shell of Lex's ear, and it sent a shiver down his spine. "Expensive but touchable." He slid one hand across Lex's midriff in a brief caress to prove his point, and Lex's stomach muscles jumped in response.

"Clark-" he said, his voice catching in the back of his throat, but Clark was too busy investigating Lex's earlobe with his teeth to respond. "Clark, please."

"Please what, Lex?" Clark asked, the rumble of his voice easily felt against Lex's back. "Please stop?"

"Yes," he said, trying very, very hard to sound decisive. He was pretty sure he failed, since Clark just laughed and hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on Lex's pants.

"You don't want me to stop," Clark said. "I wonder why that is? Word on the street is that Lex Luthor used to play, but he was never into guys. What changed?"

"Nothing," Lex grits out. "It's just you."

"Then I'm flattered," Clark said. He rubbed calloused fingertips against the strip of bare skin between Lex's shirt and his pants. Lex just gave up and laid his head back against Clark's shoulder.

"I don't want this," Lex insisted, even as he relaxed completely against Clark, a signal no one could mistake. "I didn't come here for this."

"Then why let me do this?" Clark said, whispering the words against the top of Lex's skull. "You have to know that if you really say no, I'll let you go."

"Is that so?" Lex demanded. Clark didn't strike him as the type to let _anything_ go, much less someone he was as relentlessly focused on as Lex.

"Yeah," Clark said. "All you have to do is say the word."

"I said the word already, Clark." Even if he didn't mean it.

"You have to mean it," Clark said, unconsciously echoing Lex's thoughts. "I don't want to force you, Lex. I just want you."

Impossible to describe the effect those words had on his cock. "I'm not interested in becoming anyone's toy, Clark. Much less yours."

"I don't think of you as a toy," Clark told him, sounding surprised. His exploring fingertips stroked along a sensitive spot on his hipbone, causing him to melt back against Clark's body, his eyes falling half-shut. Not the best position for him to be in, right now. "Quite the opposite. You're the puppet master, Lex. You're pulling all my strings."

"Doesn't look like it from here," Lex got out. From somewhere he found a previously untapped strength of resolve, and he drew on all of it to straighten up and pull himself free of Clark's loose embrace. He turned and looked Clark dead in the eye.

"I don't want this," he said, very firmly. "I'm not the person you think you're looking for. Go after someone else."

Clark tilted his head to the side and just looked at him for a second, his eyes bright and curious under the flashing lights of the club. His expression was almost impossible to read in the semi-darkness, but after a long moment he said, "If you're sure."

"I am," Lex said. He almost believed it.

"Then I'm not going to force you," Clark said, stepping away slightly. Such a small movement for such a large concession. Lex breathed an unconscious sigh of relief, and Clark's eyes narrowed.

"I know what I'm looking for, though," he said. "It's you. So if you change your mind, just call my name. I'll hear you."

The claim should have been ridiculous, but for some reason, Lex believed him. Clark's gaze was just too intent, too serious, for him to be joking. It was possible that he was delusional, but there was something about Clark, something that screamed his otherness, and Lex involuntarily remembered the look on Clark's face when he'd rammed into him with his car at sixty miles an hour, and the way the roof had been ripped away and bent backwards.

Not human. Why wasn't Lex surprised?

"I want you to promise," Clark continued. "If you change your mind, or even if you just need anything. Just call."

"Clark-" he protested.

"Promise," Clark insisted. Lex remembered his words earlier- _"I tend to go a little crazy unless I focus,"_ and he realized that Clark wasn't kidding. He was standing right in front of a dangerously obsessive inhumanly strong teenage boy, and that he wasn't going anywhere unless he promised. He thought that he should probably be afraid, but for some reason he just found it hot.

"I promise," he said, carefully keeping his voice even. "Can I go now?"

Clark smiled a sweet smile. "Of course," he said, and melted back into the crowd, gone from Lex's vision in a second. Lex didn't waste any time getting out of the club.

He took a deep, cleansing breath once he was out into the cold November air. The crisp chill helped to clear his head of the fog that had descended with Clark's touch, but it didn't cool the lust that was burning, right under the surface of his chaotic thoughts. Stupid, so stupid to want someone like that, but he did anyway. And then, around all of that, was the question- could he still call himself straight if he'd only been attracted to one person?

The cold press of a gun barrel against his rib cage cut off all other thoughts, and the only one left in Lex's brain was, _Damn, not again.

* * *

_

Lex was slowly growing used to attempts on his life. He wasn't sure why all resident crazies were drawn to him- did he have a target on his back, or a trouble-magnet, or something?- but they definitely were, and this was actually the fourth life-threatening situation he'd been in as many months.

He lifted his hands in the air to show that they were empty, then slowly turned to face his newest problem. He got a weird little shock from actually knowing the guy- usually his attackers were complete strangers- but it didn't last too long. At least this time he knew what it was about.

Charlie Patton had been one of his higher-level administrative assistants until about three weeks ago, when he'd discovered that the man was engaged in some fairly wide-spread embezzlement. Lex had fired him the moment he'd found out, and had a private investigator and a lawyer working on the case, which he intended to take to court. It was irritating to have someone try to steal from him, but it was especially irritating when the person actually succeeded and it was someone he trusted.

Charlie didn't look like he was too happy with his life of crime. His clothes were wrinkled enough to strike terror in the heart of any dry-cleaning service and stained with something unidentifiable, his hair looked like it wasn't on speaking terms with a comb, and his eyes were bloodshot. Served the bastard right as far as Lex was concerned, but he wasn't going to express that particular opinion with Charlie's gun pressed against his side.

"You know that this is beyond stupid," he said conversationally. "You'll never get away with it."

"I don't have to get away with it!" Charlie growled. His breath reeked of alcohol, which explained how he got the balls to actually go through with this little stunt. Lex would have yawned, but he knew better than anyone what alcohol could do when combined with desperation. "I don't have anything left to lose."

In Lex's experience this was very rarely true, but people liked to think that it was. It appealed to their sense of drama when life sucked, and normally Lex found this funny as hell, but this wasn't exactly a normal situation.

"You're not accomplishing anything, you know," Lex said. "And you can't exactly blame me for firing you when you were _stealing_ from me." Bad idea to antagonize the gun-wielding crazy, but sometimes Lex just couldn't help himself.

"You left me with nothing!" Charlie ranted. "I have nothing, thanks to you."

"Except for all the money you stole," Lex pointed out. "Which was a lot." Upwards of a million dollars.

"I have nothing!" Charlie kept saying, completely ignoring Lex's protest. "Nothing!" The gun jabbed a little harder into Lex's ribs, with serious intent this time, and Charlie gave him a leery grin. Definitely unhinged.

"Now I'm going to make sure that you have nothing, too," Charlie whispered, his eyes glinting with dangerous intent. "I'll kill you, and it won't matter what happens to me because at least you'll be dead." His finger tightened on the trigger.

Now, Lex decided, would be a very good time to test out his promise. "Clark!" he yelled, only it wasn't going to be enough because Charlie was _right there_ and the gun was going off, he heard the shot, he felt a pain but it wasn't in his side. The back of his skull felt sore, and when he opened his eyes he realized it was because he'd been thrown sideways and hit the brick wall.

Clark was standing there, one fist clenched on thin air and the other holding Charlie up over his head with terrifying ease, looking really supremely pissed. "Does this happen often?" he asked, his calm voice at odds with the thunderous expression on his face, and Lex could only nod dazedly.

"Often enough," he said. "It usually doesn't get that bad, though. Thanks."

"It was my pleasure," Clark said, and he dropped Charlie like he was nothing more than a piece of trash. There was a loud thud when he hit the ground, and Lex gave the crumpled body a worried look.

"Is he…"

"Stunned, probably a couple of broken ribs," Clark finished, before he could ask. "Not dead. We'll call the cops from your penthouse."

"'We?"" Lex echoed. Clark turned that frown on him, but Lex managed to stay strong and not start gibbering in fear.

"Yes, we," Clark said. "You need a keeper."

"And you're volunteering yourself for the job," Lex said. His voice was flat with disbelief. Clark just shrugged.

"I'm uniquely qualified," he said, holding out his hand. In his cupped palm lay a flattened piece of metal that had once been a bullet, the bullet that had been meant for Lex's heart.

"That's a neat way of phrasing it," Lex said, shock causing his voice to turn nasty. Clark didn't take offence, though, just grinned at him and pocketed the ex-bullet.

"You have to admit that I'm right," Clark said. "Who can look out for you better than me?"

Lex thought about it for a minute. Clark had a point, he had to admit that. Lex had a tendency to get himself into trouble- he freely admitted it- and it might be nice to have someone indestructible there to get him back out. Plus, Clark had already fixated on him, and it might be easier to just keep Clark by his side rather than having him show up every now and then when Lex needed him and startling the hell out of the regular security team. Who Lex had to have a stern talking-to with, by the way, if they'd let Charlie get close enough to him to almost do him in.

"When can you start?" Lex asked, and Clark grinned at him like Lex had given him a Christmas present.

"Right now," Clark said. "Ready to go?"

And Lex was, but before he did… "You're going to be staying in the guest bedroom," he cautioned. "And this is a business arrangement. Nothing to do with sex. Understand?"

"Sure, Lex." Clark's expression was sublimely innocent, and Lex couldn't tell if he was serious of if he was just fucking with Lex. Either way, he wasn't going to be rid of Clark any time soon, so he might as well just relax and go along for the ride.

Looking at Clark, who was standing there with a friendly smile that hid a massive amount of psychosis and an incredibly dangerous strength, looking like a Greek statue come to life, Lex figured that if he was on his way to Hell, at least it was going to be one hell of a trip.


End file.
